We're all free to make our own interpretations, ain't we. That's what freedom is.

However, the problem that the scriptures describe is that we have a particular innate potential that was lost, and needs to be recovered. In fact, like a person who has fallen overboard in the middle of the ocean and who will, eventually, in time, drown, unless someone with a boat or ship comes along.

Salvation = restoration. Restoration of what? Lost capacity and lost potential. You come to a fork in the road, you make a bad choice and go down the wrong path. So you need to double back to where you got lost, where you lost the correct route, and then carry on from there. Restoration of potential, in order to carry on and finally arrive at your destination.

Likewise, if Jesus is in the boat, and you are drowning, the last thing either he or you should be thinking about is 'dependency'. Jesus is there in the boat, begging and pleading with you to just grab the gunwales, hold on, and climb in once you recover your (potential). (Here, evil is the ocean, and the boat is the place where the ocean no longer has the potential to drown you; you've been removed from the ocean.)

And the reason why scripture is necessary (even if it is not complete), is because that wrong turn those before us took, and which we inherited, resulted in a collapse into ignorance. Ignorance of who God is, who we are and why we exist, such ignorance that we could not even understand that we had fallen off the boat, how it happened, and that we are in fact adrift on the ocean.

This is the pitiful level of ignorance that our ancestors emerged from.

We need Jesus in the same way that a person with leukemia needs a bone marrow transplant. Sure, you've got blood cells, etc, but their capacity has been lost and their potential neutralized. So you need a bone marrow transplant from someone who is fully healthy, and whose capacity and potential not only exist in good shape, but who is fully healthy and mature. But, if you don't even realize you have leukemia, well, that's gonna be a problem.

I personally don't think you're exactly wrong, per se, because indeed we have that potential and God's original nature exists inside us. However, the problem that plagues humanity is that there are certain conditions and realities that arose (in our past) which damaged and which block that potential. There is an anchor around our ankles, while we're there treading water in the middle of the ocean. The rope or chain that attaches that anchor to us needs to severed. When we fell overboard, we lost all our knives. We need someone who actually holds a knife to give (inherit) one to us. Then, our own potential and strength can USE the knife to cut the rope.

But if you don't even understand that you lost your knives, or even understand what a knife is, that's gonna be a problem.

Another way of thinking about this issue would be to think of yourself as a member of an investor family. As part of that family, you have a certain amount of capital, hard assets given to you by a benevolent benefactor. You can invest and multiply those assets in order to have them reach their potential and generate wealth (spiritual life, aka spiritual capacity and spiritual potential realized).

However, at some point in your family's past (your ancestors' past), your ancestors handed all the assets over to a crook in exchange for [a lie]. They signed a contract, foolishly, handing over the assets in exchange for [a lie].

So now the assets are lost, held by someone else. You have nothing to invest, nothing to use as seed capital to get the ball rolling again.

In addition to the assets, your family (ancestors) also lost (handed over) their trading license, too. So someone else now holds and 'owns' those assets and the license or right to use those assets to trade, to invest. Lost through fraud and through deception, but lost none the less.

Not only lost. Now you are actually in debt to the crook that stole them. He holds a claim on your family, because your ancestors handed the assets and the license over in exchange for [the lie]. The assets are one thing (capacity) but the real crux of the matter is the license, because without the license, the assets ultimately cannot be traded, or invested to their potential.

So the benefactor who originally set your family (lineage) up in the first place figures, that sucks. And, "if I hadn't set your family up with the assets and the license, they wouldn't have lost them in the first place".

So he decides to work, over time, to help your family to restore (reclaim) their assets, piece by piece, helping them to recover the assets from the crook. He exposes this aspect of [the lie] and that aspect of [the lie], so that your family gradually comes to understand what they lost, and how.

Plus, he promises to send someone who can, when you have restored enough of the assets, and the conditions are right, someone who has the right and authority (e.g. the original licensing authority) to take the license back from the crook, and hand it back to you and by extension, your family and lineage.

This is the underlying truth of the Bible. Now, sure, you have the potential to own and manage assets, and you have the potential and nature to hold and use the license. But that potential cannot manifest unless those assets and the license are restored to you.

I don't mean this in any doctrinal way, but I think you may in fact not realize that all the assets and capabilities you hold today: to think, reason, to feel to exercise spiritual awareness, these have all been inherited by you from the ancestors and collective humanity that over millennia, the Creator has been restoring our spiritual capacity to after it was lost by our ancestors. That's the story the Bible is attempting to communicate, and get us humans to understand.

That's just my view, and it probably won't resonate with you, but I'll put it out there anyway.

"On that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you are in Me, and I am in you."

The man is talking about a potential, a potential that was unrealized for those he was speaking to, and which is (was) to be realized at a certain point in the future.

So, as far as that potential is concerned, yep, you're right. Not outside one's self. However, that potential is not necessarily realized. It needs the yeast. It needs the bone marrow transplant. It needs to be extricated from the ocean and raised to dry land.

That's why you need not only the restored assets (spiritual capacity and growth) but also the license. Reclaimed and reissued in your name by the agent of the licensing authority, the man himself, who, on your behalf, and everyone's behalf, has the job of recovering it and inheriting it back to you, and your lineage. That is what the scripture and the man himself is attempting to tell you. Least, that's how I see it.

If you read this, cool. Personally, I'm simply grateful for the opportunity to reflect on these issues and share these views, which I wouldn't have been inspired to do if not for your original comments in which you express your views.

I am constantly reminded that no one has a monopoly on truth, or has a complete and full view of truth, but that everyone's view has at their root, some elements of truth. The main challenge as I see it, is to find those elements, and see how they can work with other elements to round out the picture we are all wanting to see.

Have a nice day, fren?